


choose your own adventure story

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: cliche_bingo, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e02 Rising, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-19
Updated: 2009-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlantis is unlike anything Teyla had ever imagined it to be. She had always understood the city of the Ancestors to be a metaphor, an idealised reflection of the city in the distant valley which the Athosians had once inhabited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	choose your own adventure story

**Author's Note:**

> Episode Coda for 1.02, 'Rising, Part II'. Written for cliche_bingo, for the prompt 'Episode Tags/Missing Scenes.'

Atlantis is unlike anything Teyla had ever imagined it to be. She had always understood the city of the Ancestors to be a metaphor, an idealised reflection of the city in the distant valley which the Athosians had once inhabited. Listening to her mother's stories as a child—sitting at Tagan's knee while she braided Teyla's hair with gentle, deft fingers—Teyla had imagined it as a shimmering city that floated somewhere above the clouds, pale and insubstantial, its towering buildings a smudge of light against the sky. In her daydreams, it had been an eyrie from which the Ancestors Yaniss and Disall had launched fierce attacks against the Wraith; in her play with her year-mates, it had been re-built each summer's day from branches and fallen trees, and the light that shone on the Ancestors was refracted green through a prism of leaves. When she had grown into a woman, Teyla had come to think of her mother's stories as a comfort and a reassurance: a kind way of telling her daughter that home was a place where she could stand her ground.

What Teyla had imagined had been true, but not in the way she had thought—this Atlantis was real. Its walls were smooth against the calluses on Teyla's fingertips, the air smelled of salt and copper, and the hallways of its central tower bustled with people both from Athos and from Earth. This Atlantis didn't float above the clouds, but on the waves of an ocean larger than Teyla had ever seen; its floors were solid beneath the soles of her shoes and its spires were enduring and beautiful; and there was such a gulf between the dreamt and the actual that she and her people had come to this place not at the end of a summer evening's tale, but having lost their home.

Athos was lost to her for now and Atlantis was real; and just as Teyla knew that the stories she would one day tell her own children were different from those of her mother, so she knew that the events of the past few days had changed her life utterly. What she had once thought was simply a tale to give children hope—a story to tell when they had frightened themselves too much by playing at Wraith in the woods and had run crying back to their parents—Teyla was now living.

The irony was that there was something not a little frightening in that very fact. Teyla did not doubt the commitment of her own people when it came to fighting the Wraith, and she felt certain that those from Earth, however uncertain and unknowing they were now, would find their own resolve in time. Yet she still did not know if both peoples together could find a way to end a story which had been so often repeated over the centuries—how could she trust herself to work closely with a people who did not know the meaning of the very place where they laid their heads at night? Not to mention that knowing that the steady course of her life had already once changed so unexpectedly, so utterly, made Teyla wonder herself if she knew which tale she was living.

These were maudlin thoughts, and Teyla only let herself indulge in them in the grey light before dawn, when she could wrap herself in the blanket Charin had woven for her and sip stout tea and look out one of Atlantis' tall windows at the sun making the sea come to life. Better to think of what she still possessed here, what she could build on—she still had her people and her knowledge, and a tentative offering of friendship from Major Sheppard and Lieutenant Ford and Doctor Weir.

On her third morning there, the Major found Teyla sitting on the small balcony which she had already claimed as her own. "You made a decision yet about joining my team?" he asked her, looking at her sidelong, his body curved in a deceptive slouch against the wall.

Teyla inclined her head at him. "Not yet."

"Okay," he said, shrugging, and slid down the wall to sit next to her. He rubbed his thumb against the rasp of stubble on his jaw for a moment. She was expecting another tack from him, some way of pulling a decision from her—she had discovered quickly that Major Sheppard's people put much store in haste—but instead he said, "You think the kids would be interested in story time tonight? It's got to be pretty boring here for them, and scary for the ones who've lost their... Anyway, I was thinking we get them together, lots of blankets, some popcorn, maybe even some of that tea you guys like so much—and I've been told I tell a pretty good yarn."

Teyla felt her eyebrows go up in pleasant surprise. Perhaps it was foolish of her, but she hadn't thought that those from Earth would know the value of tales told to others; the way that stories could shape the self. (Maybe, she scolded herself, she was being unfairly biased thanks to Marta's horrified tales of how the Earthers seemed to argue rather than talk, and were confused by something so simple as a squat toilet. Difference did not imply a lack of intelligence, after all, nor the presence of ill-intent; nor did it mean that there could never be common ground.)

"I am sure they would enjoy that," Teyla said, and smiled at him. "It is generous of you to share your time with the children in such a manner."

"Hey, they're cool kids," the Major said. "And I've got several, uh, traditional stories of my own people that I can share with them. There's a whole _saga_ of Freddie and Jason."

Teyla looked closely at him. The corner of his mouth twitched. "I am quite certain, Major Sheppard, that no such saga exists on your world."

"Ask the lieutenant!" Sheppard protested, pointing a finger at her, but there was a tremble of laughter in his voice. "He'll back me up."

"I have no interest in provoking Lieutenant Ford into uttering falsehoods," Teyla said. "But regardless, I look forward to hearing the tales you will share with us this evening. Both Halling and myself will be very interested to learn the stories your people consider appropriate for your children." The emphasis she placed on her words was subtle, but she felt confident that Major Sheppard had understood them.

Sheppard looked at her for a long, steady moment before he said, "Sure." He clambered back to his feet, saying something about having to go check on the labs to make sure that Dr McKay didn't need saving from himself again, and told her that he'd see her this evening. "You think about that team thing, okay?" was his parting shot over his shoulder.

"I shall," Teyla promised, and turned back to watch the sunrise. It was interesting that the Major had thought the telling of a story to children important enough to want to seek her out when most in the city still slept, exhausted; and it was interesting that Teyla found herself truly wanting to know how this all would end. Beneath her Atlantis floated, substantial as all her new-formed hopes, and Teyla closed her eyes and decided and thought _yes_; here began the next chapter.


End file.
